The present invention relates to the field of computer communication and related technology applications, in particular, to network-based data tagging technologies, and specifically to systems and methods suitable for processing information related to offline data tags.
Two-dimensional (2D) codes (also referred as two-dimensional barcodes, data matrix codes, or QR codes) have large information capacity, superior security, high rate of data retrieval, and strong error correction ability. After they were invented, 2D codes have been widely applied to logistics and operations management, and identification card management. With increased popularity of smart phones, 2D codes can be captured and uploaded onto real-time Internet by smart phones in real time and used cross-media channels, which enable them to find wide applications in Object-to-Object (OTO) fields, such as information acquisition, mobile shopping, commodity counterfeiting, identity authentication, coupon distribution, and so on. The OTO applications of 2D codes, however, currently focus primarily on ease of entry in e-commerce; it still lacks in-depth applications.
On the other hand, 2D codes such as bar codes have already been widely displayed in various offline carriers, such as on magazines or on exterior surfaces of buildings, etc., which enable viewers to acquire relevant information about goods or services. This approach allows users to use mobile phones and other intelligent terminal devices to obtain data tag from a wide variety of carriers, allowing more convenient executions of their corresponding functions. In contrast to data tags online, the users cannot easily conduct secondary transfer, that is, forward and share, offline data tags. In particular, users cannot use multiple offline data tags in a single application as they often do with online data tags. Moreover, users cannot record data transmission paths of the offline carriers, which significantly restricts the scope of data tagging and it associated services, and ultimately inhibits data tags to be used in large-scale commercial applications.